


Knives, A Rig, and Orange Soda

by meils121



Category: Leverage
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Living Together, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-30
Updated: 2014-09-30
Packaged: 2018-02-19 08:13:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2381180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meils121/pseuds/meils121
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Learning to live with each other was easy, probably easier than it should have been.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Knives, A Rig, and Orange Soda

            It turns into a thing, somehow. Hardison’s guest bedrooms have become known as Parker’s and Eliot’s. Parker’s got one rig permanently installed in Hardison’s living room and another hanging in the coat closet. Eliot’s knife set shows up on the counter and his collection of pots and pans starts to build in the kitchen. There’s a whole cabinet just for Parker’s cereal. Hardison has to go out and get barstools for the kitchen island because Eliot insists that his meals won’t be eaten on a couch. Parker starts using the door instead of sneaking in through the air ducts.

            It’s not like they’ve ever spoken about it, not really. It changes from Hardison asking, “Are you staying over tonight?” to Eliot grabbing the keys of his car before Parker can and driving the three of them to the apartment. A couple weeks turns into a couple months and then they all stop counting. Eventually Eliot moves out of his old apartment entirely. He shows up one day with a couple of cardboard boxes filled with shirts and his guitar slung over one shoulder, and that’s that. Parker doesn’t move out of her warehouse, not entirely, but her stuffed bunny shows up one day on her bed, and that’s when Hardison and Eliot know she’s staying there for good.

            Learning to live with each other was easy, probably easier than it should have been. They’ve got a routine now. The leather chair in the living room is Parker’s, and the other two never sit in it, even when she’s not around. Hardison gets the right side of the couch, and Eliot the left, and Parker gets the middle whenever she decides she’d rather sit with them than by herself. Hardison agrees to stop stocking so much orange soda in the fridge so Eliot has more room for vegetables. The ridiculously long showers Hardison takes – “It’s a rain shower, man! I paid too much not to enjoy every damn second of my showers!” – are balanced out by Eliot’s blink-and-you-miss-them showers.  

            They’ve grown used to each other’s patterns. It helps that they’re all night owls, in one way or another. In Eliot’s case it’s more that he just doesn’t need to sleep as much as the others, because he’s always the first one up too. The boys learn not to worry when Parker leaves late at night and doesn’t come back until the early hours of the morning. It’s easy enough to tell when she’s been jumping off buildings for the fun of it. She comes back with her hair tangled and a content smile.

            There’s a lock on the baking cabinet to protect the chocolate chips from Parker – not that it actually deters her. Several of Hardison’s limited edition action figures are now displayed with a priceless – and stolen – Rembrandt as a backdrop. There’s a fishing pole in the coat closet, right next to Parker’s rig. Hardison installs lasers everywhere just because Parker says one night that she wants to practice. Eliot learns that napping during halftime means either Parker or Hardison – and he’s still not honestly sure which one – will braid his hair. He’s inclined to think it’s Hardison.

            There are some things that take getting used to. Parker has this habit of sneaking into rooms and waiting to announce her presence. Eliot can normally tell when she’s snuck in, but he’s slightly less alert when he’s at home, and sometimes Parker scares him. She scares Hardison all the time, and Eliot’s used to the strangled yelp followed by, “Girl, I told you to stop doing that!” Hardison sings in the shower, and the first time he did it Eliot thought there was a cat trapped somewhere in the apartment. Hardison’s learned to lean protectively over whatever electronic device he’s using when Eliot comes out of the shower (or in from the rain), because the man’s got a habit of shaking his head like a dog when his hair gets wet, and water goes everywhere.

            There are mishaps – of course there are. Eliot sets off one of the lasers Hardison installed for Parker, and the whole apartment starts beeping and screeching. Parker pouts because she had almost made it through the whole apartment without setting off the system, Eliot’s mad that Hardison had to install real ones instead just lights, and Hardison’s not happy at being woken up in the middle of the night by a pissed-off Eliot and an unhappy Parker and an apartment that sounds like a cop car is in his living room. There’s the Breakfast Incident, which they all agree never to mention again because some things are better off left alone, and besides, Hardison swears up and down he's not going to come into the kitchen while Eliot's cooking ever again, and Eliot promises not to do anything so long as Hardison keeps up his end of the deal.

            Other things just fit. Hardison makes two cups of coffee in the morning and a mug of hot chocolate for Parker, because the last thing she needs is caffeine, especially that early in the morning. They drive Hardison’s car to the offices, mainly because Eliot’s cars don’t really fit three people, and even though Hardison could ride on the back of one of their motorcycles, he’s steadfastly refused every offer. They’ve got a good balance of who gets to watch what shows – Eliot likes watching Iron Chef and criticizing techniques, Parker likes watching World’s Most Expensive Homes and figuring out what the best way to break in would be. Eliot normally cooks dinner, except on Thursday nights. Those nights are reserved for takeout – normally pizza or Chinese – and movies. They alternate who gets to pick – Eliot goes for action movies, Hardison’s good for either comedies or the occasional foreign film he picks just to annoy Eliot, and Parker’s choices tend towards animated.

            Eliot has to learn what it’s like having nosy neighbors – he’s used to living places where most people figure it’s safer just to keep their noses down and not say anything, or places where he’s known as the grouchy recluse everyone is better off ignoring. But the people who live in Hardison’s building are friendly. Eliot finds himself waving to people as he heads out of the building, and swapping cookie recipes with the elderly woman who lives two floors below them. He’s also had to tell several people that they couldn’t possible have seen the blonde girl he lives with dangling off the side of the building.

            There’s a minor incidence when Hardison rescues a cat belonging to a woman on the third floor and her hug thanking him is a little too long for Parker’s liking. Luckily Eliot spots the taser before Parker can do any harm, even though Parker insists she wasn’t actually going to use it. But for the most part, they get along with the others in the building, and it only takes one glare from Eliot to stop all questions about their pasts. Dodging questions about what they do for a living is another matter entirely.

            “Computers.” Hardison will say, waving his phone around for good measure and getting insulted when someone dares suggest he’s nothing more than an IT guy.

            “Private security.” Eliot always answers, accompanied by an arm cross that makes his muscles very obvious. Most people don’t push any further than that.

            “I’m a thief.” Parker says the first time someone asks her, and of course it has to be to the building gossip. From then on, Hardison tells her to tell people she’s a security consultant. Half the building is convinced she’s a thief, and the other half think she’s a spy of some sort. Parker’s perfectly happy with both.

            No one really questions why it’s the three of them. They also don’t question why they sometimes disappear for a week or two at a time. It’s like the building as a whole has decided not to ask any questions – although it’s entirely plausible that the scary thing Eliot does with his eyes has something to do with it.

            It’s not Hardison’s place anymore. It stopped being just his a long time ago, even if it takes a little while for all of them to really acknowledge it. But eventually they start referring to it as “our place”, and it sounds nice, nicer than any of them ever really thought it would.

            It works. That’s the thing none of them were really expecting. It works. They fit in a way none of them quite thought they would. Hardison sometimes thinks back to the first time he asked Eliot if he wanted to crash at his place that night. It seems like a long time ago. He’s glad he asked. He likes waking up to hear Eliot moving around in the kitchen. There’s something oddly comforting about finding Parker dangling from the living room ceiling, upside down and fast asleep. They’ve all got these odd little pieces about them that make it so they don’t quite fit with other people, but they fit with each other.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are appreciated!
> 
> This takes place in the same verse as my Sing Me A Lullaby series as well as Feels Like Home.


End file.
